Donations: How to be sure to treat your children equally?

The classic donation is often a trap for parents of a siblings, it is better to prefer the “donation-sharing”, advises Pascale Burgaud, notary in Gironde.

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A parent aged under 80 can give a child up to 131,865 euros per period of fifteen years. The beneficiary must reveal to taxes this donation within thirty days.

This apparent simplicity hides a trap for parents of a siblings: the inheritance relationship. During the succession, each child must indeed “report” fictitiously to the estate the sums or the goods received by donation, and for this fictitious reintegration, we will generally take into account not their value in the donation, but on the day of death ! If a child has invested his donation in real estate, during the succession, it is the current value of the property that will count, not the sum given.

Parents cannot therefore be sure, during their lifetime, to have treated their children equally, this equality can only be verified their death. Even if they allocate their children of the same sum.

Imagine a mother who gave her two children 100,000 euros, used differently. On the death, donations are reassessed: the child has “reported” 100,000 euros, the B, 200,000 euros. The deceased goods on the day of death being evaluated at 200,000 euros, the inheritance mass reaches 500,000 by reinstating donations.

The fictitious sharing between children therefore gives them theoretical rights of 250,000 euros each. “A” will receive the succession of 150,000 euros (250,000 – 100,000 already received), “B”, 50,000 (200,000 – 150,000 already received). To avoid the “report” and freeze the value of the donation, it is necessary to allot your children simultaneously by notarial act with a donation-sharing.

/Media reports.